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Dr. Jay
Account closed
Registered: Jan 2003
Posts: 32 |
Demo wars?
I'm interested if anyone has ever "sequenced" demos that are responses to each other, so that others can view them in order and appreciate the challenge of "one-upping" each other. A few examples I can think of:
1. The vertical raster bars - Demonus Interruptus, which refers to a few demos prior, and followed by Interruptus Retriggerus.
2. The shadow casting. In the Plush +h2k demo there is a scene with H2k having a sun and a moon casting interleaved shadows. I just saw a demo the other day (forgot the name) that had the same with just a sun ... obviously the Plush was a "one-up" for that routine.
It would be interesting to line up such demos and watch the evolution over time.
Also, has anyone done/attempted a timeline of when breakthrough effects starting appearing? i.e. first raster routine, first FLD, first FLI, first sprite stretch (I stumbled on this in '88 purely by accident but was a horrible coder and couldn't duplicate it -- I knew the switching on the x-size but was lost on the need to preserve the bad line -- curious when this was "invented" by someone who knew what they were doing), etc.
Look forward to the replies! |
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Nightlord
Account closed
Registered: Jan 2003
Posts: 131 |
the demo with sun moving behind CML is called tower power by camelot which was released back in 94 or 95 i think. that is one of my favorite demos. i still remember how i jumped when i saw the 72 face round vector object
which reminds me after a short time, oxyron demo (comalight 12 or dawnfall) had another round texture map with a little reference to camelot's tower power :) |
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Cupid
Registered: Jan 2002
Posts: 83 |
There were loads of "competitions" back in the days, like DYCP records, Faces of Vectors, Number of simultaneous scrollers, longest scroller without reloading, fastest doom/wolfenstein clone and and and...
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Shadow
Account closed
Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 355 |
A somewhat older example:
Larch 3/Bones. The text states that their 32 sprite multiplexer D.Y.S.P. only having a radius of 55, while some other group (the name of which I can't recall at the moment) had to use a much larger radius to accomplish the same effect. :)
I also think they had a record breaking 600 dot one-framed plotter in that dmeo.
I remember tons of record breaking stuff from back in the day. Most sprites in a multiplexer, most mega-DYCPS, most chars in a DXYCP, widest tech-tech etc. ahh.. nostalgic overload!!
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Graham
Account closed
Registered: Dec 2002
Posts: 990 |
ok, let me try to gather some dates:
first open upper/lower border is pretty unknown. it
has been 1985 or earlier and propably was first seen
in a game.
first open sideborder was done by 1001 crew in
early 1986.
first FLD was done by The Judges in August 1987.
first VSP was done by Meanteam in October 1987.
first FLI-routine was done by Beyond Force in
January 1989.
first FLI-picture was done by Blackmail in Summer
1989.
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Rough
Account closed
Registered: Feb 2002
Posts: 1829 |
>first FLI-routine was done by Beyond Force in
>January 1989.
which demo? the one with the splits? |
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icon
Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 90 |
E.C.I - Extended Colors with Interlace where invented 19880618 by TC and SSS (later HZ) |
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icon
Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 90 |
Here is some more:
ESCOS - 1986 in Aug by TSI/1001
RocK Monitor III - 1987 by The Dutch USA-team
and the world first scroller in all the borders where done by Mahoney in Thriumph 2001 1988-02-16 as seen in the demo "Gnarp!"...
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Flex
Registered: Feb 2002
Posts: 110 |
The first upborder megadycp done by Judge/Contex in "Fascinating" part2.
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raven
Account closed
Registered: Jan 2002
Posts: 137 |
@Graham: wasnt the first VSP (and linecrunch) introduced in
Mr.Cursor's Double Density demo?
Have to get my disks out & check..
ah nostalgia :) |
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TDJ
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 1879 |
I think he already did the trick in a TWG demo before that, the Double Density was just the polished up version. |
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Graham
Account closed
Registered: Dec 2002
Posts: 990 |
@raven: nopes, the double density demo was released in 1989. meanteam already did that in 1987.
@icon: nopes, ESCOS was out in october 1986, not august.
but another important date: first DYCP scroller was released in the end of June 1986 by Pure-Byte.
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Graham
Account closed
Registered: Dec 2002
Posts: 990 |
i found another interesting demo which might destroy common belief again. the first megadycp wasnt done by sphinx in the beginning of 1989, i have found a small 15 blocks demo released around october 1986 which also had some kind of megadycp scroller. |
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chatGPZ
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11352 |
The Mr.Cursor demo was "Babylon III" ... however, i _think_ he did it before in another (rather ugly/unpolished) demo aswell.... mmmmh
i dont think he was first though.... he probably was the first to _understand_ this effect, but thats another story :o) |
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Graham
Account closed
Registered: Dec 2002
Posts: 990 |
@groepaz: afaik "babylon 3" only had a simple 4 color logo scroller over rasterbars, no VSP... "double density" had vsp. |
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Goblin
Registered: Jan 2002
Posts: 10 |
Well, first realtime filled vector was in Brutal III/Light
:) |
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TDJ
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 1879 |
Quote: Well, first realtime filled vector was in Brutal III/Light
:)
I remember seeing that one: only some filled cubes, no music, bugging like hell .. |
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Cruzer
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 1048 |
Just discovered this thread. Here's some follow ups to some of the different posts above...
The group that Bones were addressing with the multiplexer record in The Larch 3 was Upfront. I think these two groups had quite a rivalry on a number of different routines.
Light was first with filled vector on the c64, but Mitch/Visual Reality was first to port the Amiga's blitter-based flood filling technique to the c64 (Visuality, summer 1992.) This lead to quite a quantum leap in improvement of the speed.
I think the first all-border scroll was from Happy New Year/Starion (released for new year 1987/88.)
Upper/lower border sprites were first made by Sodan in 1985, for the intro to his game "Crackers Revenge", according to himself on his website http://www.sodan.dk atleast. He also claims to have made the first megademo (a demo with more than one part I think that means) together with Magician42. This was the Amiga demo Tech Tech from 1987, where the tech tech effect also was invented.
Hey, someone should make a site dedicated to the origins of different routines, aswell as records. Would be quite inspiring for coders I think. |
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trident
Registered: May 2002
Posts: 91 |
> Hey, someone should make a site dedicated to the origins of
> different routines, aswell as records. Would be quite
> inspiring for coders I think.
Agreed! Screenshots and short descriptions of how the routines work would be cool to have too.
I guess a Wiki would be a good way to implement this kind of site. A Wiki basically is a web site where each page can be edited by anyone and since the changes are viewable by anyone, it is easy to keep an eye out for crap being entered. Wikis have been found to work for other kind of information, such as the Wikipedia: http://www.wikipedia.org/
Perhaps something like that could be set up here at the CSDb? |
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Cruzer
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 1048 |
> Perhaps something like that could be set up here at
> the CSDb?
That would be a good idea, so all info about the demos are gathered at one place. Hope someone from the staff reads this.
Btw, I almost forgot the "zoomer war" of the early 90's. It all started with the quite slow text zoomer in the intro for The Larch 3/Bones, released at the Trilogy/Upfront/Dominators Xmas Party 1989 in Randers/Denmark. Next year at the Dexion Xmas Party 1990 in Odense/Denmark, Upfront and Light had some improved zoomers in their competing demos. Upfront's were the biggest (fullscreen w/o borders, like Bones' version) and Light's were not as high, but in sideborders.
So this ofcourse lead to some disputes about which one were kewlest, and Upfront added to the confuzion by not releasing their demo (a bad habit they had started a year earlier with "Too Drunk To Fuck") so since some ppl had a hard time remembering this effect from the compo, there even started circulating rumours that it was in sideborders or even all borders.
In the spring 1991 Slammer made a zoomer the size of Upfronts, but this time in sideborders, for his demo Stroke One/Demotion.
At the same time Glasnost, who was the coder behind Light's zoomer, had now started his new group Camelot and was working on an all-border zoomer for "The Unnamed Demo". He told about this to Ricky/Bonzai who promised to keep his mouth shut and not steal the idea, but he did, and released an all-border zoomer which could only zoom one letter at a time.
When The Unnamed Demo/Camelot came out in the summer 1991, Glasnost was pretty pissed at Ricky, which made him bash him quite a bit in the note for the demo. Anyway, Glasnost's zoomer was much kewler (16 letters at a time) so the war had a happy ending with Camelot as winners. :) |
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CreaMD
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 3048 |
Unreleased? Seems like someone should start something like Games That weren't -> "Demos that weren't" project ;-) |
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Stryyker
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 468 |
Maybe add Met Crest first? It wouldn't take much to look through old diskmags for announced demos that never happened. |
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CreaMD
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 3048 |
It's different ... Demos shown and unreleased and demos announced and forgotten. |
